Note: The commands described in this article have been tested against Windows 7 operating system.

In certain instances, the Windows Event Log Service mai fail to start and the user gets an error, in most cases an "Access denied" (error code 5). In most cases, this is caused by incorrect permissions. Through various circumstances, the permissions may end up corrupted and affect several aspects of the system functionality. The permissions can be adjusted using the takeown and cacls.

Takeown is a tool allows an administrator to recover access to a file that was denied by re-assigning file ownership. Cacls and its newer variant Icacls displays or modifies access control lists (ACLs) of files. In case a system restart does not fix the problem, here are the folders that have to be reset and the corresponding commands:

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